The controversies of the games in culture hypothesis can be emotional especially because society complexity is subjective and at best incomprehensible. The hypotheses are documented in the Human Relations Area Files ( ). The hypothesis has been extended to cross-cultural relationships between strategic game playing and the following: obedience training, use of strategic folktales, and political complexity. Games in culture hypothesis -that societies that play strategic games are more likely to engage in complex social and economic activities-has generated a contentious debate in anthropology but so far there is no comprehensive empirical research on it. Building on this understanding, I analyze two hypotheses related to the playing of indigenous strategic board games in African societies: games in culture hypothesis and origins of entrepreneurship hypothesis. In cognitive science and psychology (for example, the works of Adrianus de Groot, Herbert Simon, Fernand Gobet and Gerd Gigerenzer), strategic board games-two-person zero-sum games of perfect information-especially chess have been used to understand how human beings use heuristics to make decisions in complex environments. Taking Nunn’s, S109 definition of culture as “decision making heuristics or ‘rules of thumb’ that have evolved given the need to make decisions in complex and uncertain environments”, this study contributes to this emerging literature by focusing on the foundations of the ‘rules of thumb’. This study investigates whether the learning in the use of heuristics from playing strategic board games influences some societies to be socio-economically complex (in terms of settlement patterns and jurisdictional hierarchy beyond the community) and to be good at business. This idea also follows from Simon’s research program on procedural and bounded rationality in which given their complexity, combinatorial tasks such as board games offer an ideal environment for exploring human bounded rationality and learning. Board games can therefore act as catalysts for heuristics for decision making in real life. The premise for testing these hypotheses is that the rules and strategies in the mancala board games are consistent with everyday language and decisions. In this paper, I introduce and analyze the correlational relationship between another non-work intrinsic feature of African ethnic groups, i.e., the playing of indigenous board games (commonly called mancala) and economic outcomes-socio-economic complexity and entrepreneurship-in the historical and contemporary societies. Examples include: Moscona, Nunn and Robinson on family structure and conflict Chen on language characteristics and saving Lowes on marriage systems and child outcomes and Xue and Michalopoulos on folklore and trade. Beyond cultural traits related to work or anti-social beliefs (e.g., plough agriculture by Alesina, Giuliano and Nunn, and witchcraft beliefs by Gershman ), the recent literature has rightly started to focus on the intrinsic structures of African communities by understanding the origins and consequences of these features. Despite the null results, I explore how related hypotheses and studies can build on the comprehensive mancala database.Ī growing literature in economics investigates the short run and long run effects of culture on economic development (see a review of this literature by Nunn ). Using historical and contemporary data, I do not find evidence for either hypothesis. I compile the first comprehensive database of mancala games in Africa matched to ancestral characteristics data, and for 18 African countries, to the Afrobarometer survey data. I revisit this hypothesis with better data and motivated by anecdotal evidence, introduce a contemporary hypothesis, origins of entrepreneurship hypothesis-that descendants of societies that played complex mancala games are more likely to be engaged in non-farm self-employment today. Anthropology literature suggests that these games may be associated with socio-economic complexity of the ethnic groups-the so-called games in culture hypothesis. This study examines the correlational relationship between the historical playing of indigenous strategic board games (also called mancala) and the socio-economic complexity of African ethnic groups as well as the incidence of entrepreneurial pursuits.
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